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Talk:Dingbot Prime
Dingbot prime wasn't Agatha's first working clank, the search engine was, unless you count shooting out the window of the lab at TPU as "working". On the other hand, D#1 is the prototype... (and) the best example... of Agatha's style, I think. A clever way to express all this hasn't come to me yet. Zarchne 16:15, 7 March 2008 (UTC) :True. I meant 'first working dingbot' didn't I. But you're right- Dingbot Prime is a very good expression of her style, and that should be noted. I don't have a clever way to express it either, though. -Evaneyreddeman 19:34, 7 March 2008 (UTC) Dingbot Prime in Mechanicsburg They article says that he has not shown up in Mechanicsburg, but it appears to me that he is on top of the flywheel to the coffee engine on June 18, 2007. http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070618TheQuietOne 14:49, 1 May 2008 (UTC)TheQuietOne :You're right, it's definetly him. I wonder how he managed to follow along? -Evaneyreddeman 15:55, 1 May 2008 (UTC) :Obviously, Agatha must have built some sort of neat little device that gives him his trademark mobility.http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TravelingAtTheSpeedOfPlot TheQuietOne 19:24, 1 May 2008 (UTC) :What do y'all expect... he's her familiar... ;-} -- Donovan Ravenhull 23:06, 1 May 2008 (UTC) :: I think we've just run head-on into a nasty case of Continuity Wobble. -- Corgi 06:30, 16 March 2009 (UTC) ::: How can we distinguish the from the ? I haven't noted a distinguishing feature. If we can't tell them apart we can't tell which (if either) is Dingbot Prime. Argadi 09:19, 16 March 2009 (UTC) ::::There's no reason they can't be the same dingbot that either 1) was left behind in the coffee shop by accident, or 2) given to Zeetha by Agatha before she entered Castle Heterodyne, and Gil is simply lying to Zola/Tiktoffen about where he found it. One Brow :::::Not necessarily given by anyone to anyone. It somehow found its way into Agatha´s pack before the escape from Castle Wulfenbach, and somehow made it into the Sturmhalten dungeon with Agatha, and somehow found its way into the Mechanicsburg coffee shop. So why shouldn´t it somehow find its way to Gil so he could take it into Castle Heterodyne? The Dingbots and Gil worked together before, to rescure Agatha from the slaver-infested lab on Castle Wulfenbach. :::::Actually, I´m almost convinced Dingbot has some sort of hyper-advanced ability to always show up at the time and place where it needs to show up in order to help its mistress. :::::Or, for an even crazier idea, the future Agatha, the one that created the time windows we saw early in Volume III (in Bang´s flashback) has found a way to deposit Dingbot Prime where and when it is needed; that would explain why a Dingbot Prime is with Agatha in the coffee shop, while another that was picked up in Sturmhalten is presumably with Gil all the time. Assuming Gil told the truth about picking it up in Sturmhalten, that is. -Sir Chaos 17:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC) :::: The Dingbot with Gil in the Castle needs to be mentioned in an update to the article, and I have done so. As for the apparent contradiction between that Dingbot and the one in the coffee shop, well, this article now needs a Mad page, in which the theories expressed here and others will be noted. --Quadibloc 21:10, 16 March 2009 (UTC) Changing the way we think I think we might have to redefine 'Dingbot Prime' as a style of dingbot, and a generation -- in other words, the cyclopic watch-shaped dingbots are always going to be ones directly from Agatha's hands, unless they're specialised ones like the wingbots; any other can be presumed to be second and later generations. Which Primes were built when is going to be impossible to determine unless she's been putting serial numbers on their metallic tuchuses. off to stick 'wingbots' in the Fan Terminology category — Corgi 19:22, 22 April 2009 (UTC) : Without definitely expressing a judgment—although Agatha's statement to the Castle that she doesn't like working alone so she makes assistants plural certainly seems to multiple Primes—, I suggest approaching this from the other direction: what is the upper bound on the number of Prime-class dingbots we've seen? (Incidentally, Euclid proved that the number of primes is unbounded.) ⚙Zarchne 17:10, 9 June 2009 (UTC) Page needs cleanup I have marked this page for cleanup. We now know that the there are more that one prime dingbot's running around in the castle. The hero from Strumhalten is conducting electrical experiments using the castle as spare parts. While the second, Deuce Dingbot is proving to be mighty useful to Agatha. The second is also the one used as a compact. I have not made any changes to the page yet. But expect to on another pass. Rej Maddog 04:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC) : I'm not so sure the dingbot Agatha uses to primp herself isn't a third copy. It's my impression (possibly false) that the one riding on the Big Scary Clank is controlling it, not merely hitching a ride. If that's the case, Agatha would be foolish to disable it just to provide her a mirror. Rancke 12:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC) Let's be scientific about this * We know that the last DP Agatha builds in Beetleburg, #0, fails, because she was still suppressed at the time. End there. * We know that the first fully animate DP Agatha builds on the CW manages to stow away and is the DP with the Circus, and therefore the one who blows up Castle Sturmhalten. Next documentable sighting of #1 is...? * Agatha was muy Sparky, with tools in hand in the coffee shop. Is this plausibly #2? Is this the one she took into the Castle, or was it left to maintain the boilers? * After having access to a lab, tools, spare parts and sleepsparkery (she's still doing it, those poor boys), has Agatha built another DP here? (To respond to a comment upstream about not breaking DP's control of the MADD for primping functions, these are pretty obviously working on some aetheric connectivity which doesn't require immediate contactthese are pretty obviously working on some aetheric connectivity which doesn't require immediate contact. That short a distance would be no problem.) Corgi 15:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC) : Responding point-by-point: :* I fully agree. :* How do we know this? We only know one of the Dingbots stowed away, is there any evidence it is the first she build on CW? Do we know how many she built looking like that on CW? As far as that one blowing up the castle, she built lots of Dingbots for the Battle Circus—many exploding, but probably also many as construction helpers. :* No matter how Sparky, building a Dingbot takes time and parts. Fabricating metal parts isn't fast unless she had the right tools, and she had plenty to worry about with the coffee engine parts. Unless she happened to stumble across all the parts she needed, I don't think she built any Dingbots in the coffee shop. :* She quite possibly build a Dingbot or two in that lab. : The definition of Dingbot Prime has been "Agatha's second working clank". The usage seems to have slipped to "pocket watch-like clanks with a big eye". Since we know there are more than one with that description we need more information to trace the lineage. Argadi 17:24, 30 April 2009 (UTC) Way a minute... what hard evidence do we actually have that there are two DPs? As far as I can tell it could go like this: DP blows up Sturmhalten Castle, then hitches a ride to Mechanicsburg with somebody, either among the Circus or the Wulfenbach troops (or even aboard the airship that takes the Baron, Dupree and Higgs to Mechanisburg. He then shows up in the Coffee House when Agatha needs him. He stays around there until nightfall, then stows away with someone (presumably Zeetha or Carson von Mekkhan) to get to Gil. Once with Gil, he drops off the radar until Gil pulls him out of his pocket After running off when Gil releases him, he finally meets up with Agatha again. There is - as far as I can see - actually no need for him to be in two places at once. The only inconsistency here is Gil´s statement that he picked up DP in Sturmhalten. As far as we know, he has never been to Sturmhalten - he has only ever read the reports, as he says to Dr Sun and later to the Jägers. However, he knew DP (or the dingbots in general, anyway) from the Castle, and would feel confident assuming they´ve been at Sturmhalten with Agatha. So he recognized DP for what he was when he met him in Mechanicsburg, and cooked up the Sturmhalten story to explain how he got him, to avoid admitting he´d been associating with Agatha´s companions. Does anyone see holes in this theory? -Sir Chaos 19:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC) : I see several potential problems. :* Sturmhalten is the wrong story to an avoid an association with Agatha. If he wanted to avoid a connection to Agatha he should have given some other location (Prague, or Paris, or Moscow). :* Why did the Dingbot go to Gil rather than staying with Agatha or Zeetha? It couldn't have known he was going in. :* Why did Agatha have to wind it when Gil just wound it? :* With Gil (even after the chain is removed), but not . :* There's not much time between and . Why did it decide to stop working on other Dingbots, and how did it manage to find Agatha in an unknown, large, dangerous castle in that time? Argadi 21:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC) :: Thanks for your thoughts. In order of your questions: ::* Sturmhalten is the right story for Gil´s pirate persona. A pirate crazy enough to try to loot Castle Heterodyne would also be crazy enough to stop at Sturmhalten and sift through the wreckage in hopes of finding something valuable. Saying DP was "something a friend of mine built" was stupid, though. ::* DP was in Gil´s lab with Gil and Agatha, so it may well know they´re sort of friends or something; besides, it certainly knows Gil is a spark, so he would know how to make use of DP, and know of DPs significance for Agatha, which Zeetha probably wouldn´t (and even Krosp thinks DP is useless). ::* It´s been working pretty hard since then; besides Agatha couldn´t know how much time it had left before needing rewinding, so she wound it up to full, just in case. ::* Good point... may just be a minor mistake (those happen; Trish Belloptrix´s hair grows quite a bit from to , for example), though. ::* How did it know how and where to find Agatha all the other times? And I think it stopped working on other Dingbots just in time to get to Agatha when she needed it... like all the other times. -Sir Chaos 21:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC) Corgi said: "...these are pretty obviously working on some aetheric connectivity which doesn't require immediate contact..." :Oh, come on! Now you're just making things up! ;^) Rancke 21:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC) :: STOP WIPING OUT MY ANSWERS YOU STUPID EDIT CONFLICTS! *sob* -- Corgi 21:30, 30 April 2009 (UTC) Why do we care how many? To those doing the admirable work of trying to track the creation, appearances, and demise of various DingbotPrimes, I pose this question: why do we care if there are multiple DPs or only one? Now, of course, I'm going to try to list reasons to answer that question: :A. We know that dingbots created by Agatha herself are generally more capable than succeeding generations of copies built by other dingbots. If we can identify a dingbot as one of Agatha's own, then we know it can do great and terrible things. :B. Among dingbots created by Agatha, there are at least two conflicting factors concerning their capabilities. First, Agatha's more recent work should be better than her early work. But, if older dingbots can learn, they may know more than newly minted models. :C. By tracking the whereabouts of an individual dingbot, we can infer what characters have met off-camera. While it's interesting to wonder how Gil got any dingbot, it's more interesting if that dingbot is the same the DingbotPrime who released the Geisterdamen is the same one who activated Agatha's signal projector is the same one who . . . On the other hand, if there are lots of dingbots that look like Prime, tracking the whereabouts of any of them will be next to impossible. All of this leaves me with two four new questions: # If there are multiple round, pocketwatch-shaped dingbots, does this shape indicate that these are ones built by Agatha? # Do dingbots learn, develop personalities, loyalties, and enemies? # Can dingbots communicate with each other when out of sight/earshot? # Can they form a collective intelligence that is smarter than any of the individual dingbots in the collection?